Biography

Gabriella Cerritelli lives and works in Turin. Dancer, choreographer, performer and dance teacher, with an education that ranges from physical theater to dance to African expression and from tai chi to yoga, she has among her masters Zigmund Molik, Yoshi Oida, Mamadu Dioume, Eugenio Allegri, Elsa Wolliston, Koffi Koko, Irene Tassembedo, Eneida Di Castro, Joseph Lee (Li Jingstong) whose stages she attended in Italy, France and Burkina Faso.

Since the 90s, she started several projects focused on the relationship between dance, live music and different disciplines, making her first artistic projects with music improvisers Alex Rolle and Domenico Sciajno, at a later stage directing her research on a repertoire of solo-performances supported by multimedia interventions in collaboration with sculptors, videomaker and musicians.

In 2002, she made her debut with “Vuoto d’amore”, based on poems by Alda Merini.

In 2004, she opened in Rome at the photo exhibition by Francesco Carbone dedicated to the work of Pina Bausch and made her debut with the new installation-performance "Many Artist's" by the sculptor Filippo Armenise.

In 2005, she danced and choreographed for "Wstawac! Il commando dell’alba" with original music by Ennio Morricone directed live by the Maestro.

In 2006, she performed at the Festival Interferenze with electronic duo Retina.it and debuted with "Behind the door" (plus live visuals by Claudio Sinatti) at the Torino Danza Festival. In 2008, she presented the installation-performance "Mara's Attack" designed by the sculptor Paolo Grassino, completed the following year as “Attack” in collaboration with director and light designer Roberto Tarasco.

In 2011, she was selected for an artist residency at the Menagerie de Verre in Paris where she carried out a study on "Lightness" by Italo Calvino for the show that will debut under the direction of Roberto Tarasco entitled "Minuto mobile e leggero".

In 2012, she performed "Many Artist's" at Festival of Contemporary Dance Almada (Lisboa), and " Minuto mobile e leggero – second studio" (plus live visuals by Nadia Zanellato) at Festival Santa Cultura in Vincoli (Turin). She also debuted with the performance "Corpo/Memoia" on texts from "L’amore molesto" by Elena Ferrante.

In 2013 she made her debut with the production and the choreography of “Hub” (a performance carried out together with two dancers and two performers on wheelchair) for the contemporary art exhibition OSTRALE in Dresda and in OGR of Turin on the “Festival La Piattaforma”.

In the context of the Festival “Teatro a Corte” in “Castello di Racconigi” (TO), she realized “Attack in Racconigi” the site-specific version of the installation-performance “Attack” and in occasion of the global day against violence on women, she produced a new staging of “Vuoto d’Amore”.

In 2014 she made her debut with “Muovo il suono”, a dance and music interactive performance together with the musician and composer Domenico Sciajno.

In 2015, at the opening of the Regional Choreographic Center in Collegno-Torino, she presented the performance of interaction between music and dance "Micro Macro" with Domenico Sciajno.
In 2016 she created "Contact", a creation for the "Stone Brain", "Bone of the Earth", "Stone Ideas" by Giuseppe Penone in the Gardens of the "Venaria Reggia" in the Nature in Motion review.

She begins collaborating with guitarist and composer Paolo Spaccamonti.con with a project of dance and music interaction that debuts at the Castelli Aperti Festival. at Villa Ottolenghi -Aqui Terme.

Her performances are hosted both in theaters and in art galleries and contemporary art spaces.
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Artistic Profile

“A strong taste for research feeds Gabriella Cerritelli who experiences her art through ever new collaborations and intentions. It reads in each work the openness of a body shaped by a variety of techniques (primarily from land-based african matrix) to liaise with the various artistic media in a multi-disciplinary research open to the “here and now”.

In a drama that can, from time to time, unfold into exquisitely plastic suggestions, inspired by sound or literary, it resonates an expressive language based on improvisation and instant performance that arises from listening and from the quality of presence.

Amongst many works, remarkable are the fine solo-installation "Attack" that - along with the complicity of sculptor Paolo Grassino - develops the interplay between plastic arts, dance and music; “Minuto, mobile e leggero” (featuring live visuals by Nadia Zanellato) that, by means of Calvino, investigates the funambulism of living, and the newest work "Hub" also featuring disabled dancers, whose stake is to change the limits of artistic potential as well as mobility in light of diversity and different ways of communication”.

Chiara Castellazzi Journalist and dance critic